One of my new bosses, and there appear to be several, all of whom are princesses -- a sign, perhaps, of future problems, assigned her assistant, Ra'id to show me around a little. The national pasttime of Saudi Arabia appears to be shopping. I visited both the old Thumairy Market by Al-Masmak fortress, which I keep mistakenly referring to as a palace, and some modern malls and shopping districts. There are no clubs and restaurants are often segregated into single (i.e. men), and family sections -- even the McDonalds I passed had two seperated sides separated by a wall. The malls have levels with signs reading: "Entry forbidden to single men, families only." It was interesting to see that many people shop as families, though this may also have something to do with the fact that women cannot go out without an adult male relative accompanying them. Indeed, in most of its outward appearences, Riyadh scarcely differs from many American cities with strip malls, freeways, ubiquitious cars, fast food chains, and so on save in one aspect: the lack of women out and about. 
The picture above is, I should mention, my hotel by night. This picture is the Faisaliyah tower all aglow. Returning to women. It is interesting to me to see men doing most of the errands. One of my bosses, a princess, has a male assistant who does all her errands. We visited a modern mall, which, minus the Arabic signs, looked as though it had been transported from suburban Washington, D.C. (the rich part, of course). The women in their long black abayas, not all of whom wore hijabs and veils by the way, suddenly brought to my mind the Harry Potter films with everyone swishing around in long black cloaks.
The other difficulty is that during every prayer time, every shop must close. The locals are accustomed to it and plan accordingly, the few foreigners like myself, and there were very few especially in the Thumairy Market where I saw none whatsoever, do find it somewhat difficult to interrupt one's shopping and site seeing continuiously throughout the day. I don't complain of course; it would be beyond rude to do so. The best time to go shopping is after the evening prayer around 8:00 pm because there are no more prayers until morning and the stores stay open until 1 or 2 in the morning. I past a KFC that was open until 3:00 am.
Here is Kingdom Tower by night from Olaya street where we visited Jarir bookstore, the Barnes and Noble of Saudi Arabia. It really is. You can buy everything from the complete sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (which I did for an unbelievably low price by American standards), to the latest Stephen King novel both in English and Arabic. It also had a Starbucks cafe in the corner. It was a good place to visit. I was able to purchase some novels to help improve my Arabic. Again, I was the only non-Arab I saw and was a source of curiousity to many children.
Photography is discouraged in many parts of Saudi Arabia and I have been warned not to take pictures of women nor of anybody without their permission. This made it all but impossible for me to photograph the old market or the mall. I even did a google search to see if any braver souls had done it and found none at all. My verbal pictures will have to suffice, I suppose.
My favorite place in the old market was an antique store that puts any antique store in America to shame. When I visited with Princess Maha, she lamented to me that too few of the Saudis appreciate the remants of their heritage and so books, documents, artefacts, buildings, and so forther, unless they are Qurans, (her words) are razed or tossed. In this store I saw cardboard boxes full of hand illuminated manuscripts some of them dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth century. There were rust canckered swords and daggers. I bought the dagger at the left, a book (see my previous entry), and some jewellry. There were lots of ivory and coral items for sale. Can't buy any of them, of course. It's illegal to bring them back into the States. There were old globes, a rusted astrolabe, hundreds of daggers just sitting in a box, old shields, jewellry, and so on. Some were no doubt fakes or reproductions and I am not expert enough to tell the genuine antiques from the real things (except, of course, for the books). Since, however, this was no tourist trap dump like those that surround the Pyramids of Giza (no offense, but it's true), I was less suspicious than I would normally be.
So, basically a night on the town in Riyadh is shopping and eating. Not really all that different than back home the social dynamics are a little different. I quickly learned, however, that creative locals find ways around it mostly involving cell phones. Tomorrow I meet once more with the princesses and the gentlemen they are hiring to organize the materials already here in
Riyadh. I will also finally visit the exhibit on King Faisal which was part of the main reason for my trip. However, we delayed visiting at first because Princess Haifa wanted to meet me at the exhibit and then the exhibit was close for much of the weekend open only for a few hours at night for families only. We unattached men can only visit in the early morning. Until then.
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